O.J. Simpson Did It--At Least in This Novel

In big, bold letters the book’s title is emblazoned on the cover: “The Confession of O.J. Simpson.” In much smaller letters, we learn it is “a work of fiction.”

Timed to coincide with Simpson’s 50th birthday last week--as Berkley Books publicists go out of their way to tell us--this is the first novel based on the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman, and the Simpson trials.

Author David Bender, West Coast contributing editor to George magazine, tells us right off that the book is “entirely the product of my own imagination . . . a flight of fancy.” Well, not entirely. The cast of characters, in addition to Simpson, includes both murder victims, Simpson friend Al Cowlings, Judge Lance Ito, Marcia Clark, Johnnie Cochran and Fred Goldman and his attorney, Daniel Petrocelli.

But the storyteller, one Sam Roosevelt, is strictly fictitious, a Bay Area lawyer to whom Simpson decides to make his “confession.” Simpson’s motive: He needs money. He has decided to take Goldman up on his offer to waive his share of the civil judgment (about $13.5 million) in return for Simpson’s public confession.

Acknowledging that he has never met Simpson and has no inside knowledge of the case, Bender offers titillating fictional replies to such unanswered questions as: What happened to O.J.’s travel bag and the knife used in the murders?

In Bender’s scenario, Simpson dumped the bag in an airport trash can, then minutes before catching his plane to Chicago called a confidant to come and dig it out. The confidant was promised that if the bag never turned up, he’d get $10,000 a month tax-free for life. As for the knife--a Swiss Army model--O.J. breezed through security with it, reckoning rightly that inspectors would be too star-struck to worry about what was in his pockets besides loose change. He then brought it back from Chicago and neatly disposed of it--under a blanket of flowers in Nicole’s coffin.

And in case you wondered what O.J. was scribbling on those yellow legal pads during the criminal trial, Bender offers:

O.J. on his “Dream Team” of lawyers: “This is the Nightmare Team! If Gil [Dist. Atty. Garcetti] and Marcia know how bad this is, they would have got the death penalty.”

On Clark and Ito: “She is playing for the camera like this is an audition to her . . . the jury dont [sic] like any of her acting they can see thru her [sic] . . . Judge Ego is a lot like Marcia. They can have a TV show together like Regis and Cathy Lee [sic].”

Simpson is portrayed by Bender as a man out of touch with reality, a cocaine-sniffing egomaniac unable to function without the adulation of his public. Perhaps, observes protagonist Roosevelt, “the acquittal was actually the worst thing that could have happened to him. It forced him to walk the halls of his own life, like Banquo’s ghost.”

As it turns out, Bender has a more finite fate in mind for him. Without giving away the plot, we can tell you that Simpson’s eulogy--flowery words about a man who died “a hero’s death”--is delivered by none other than Johnnie Cochran.